If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

Web Site Templates

Hello,

I am going to launch a responsive web site for a business. I have a good deal of experience with web development but since I want to focus more of my time on other aspects of this project I am trying to find a good template to use and customize.

I started looking into various responsive templates but there are a few things I need to know and was hoping you guys could help me out.

1. How do these templates work as far as licensing? I've seen some templates that charge a small amount $70, but then you could buy it for say $1000 (not the exact amount, just off the top of my head). How does buying the $70 template differ from the full-up version? Do they remove JS code or something that allows you to do more with the site.

Now, as always, I might be what most people would consider "harsh" -- I'm a heretic, it goes with the territory.

I don't consider there to be reputable sites for 'templates' -- as the vast majority of places like TemplateMonster and ThemeForest are filled with nothing but inaccessible, bloated, poorly written steaming piles of dung -- and seem to exist more as whorehouses for scam artists than legitimate developers.

The very practice of "off the shelf" templates is in itself patently absurd; in that the end result is most always shoe-horning your content into a layout it wasn't designed for! While you might be able to extract ideas and some small bits of art late in the process of building a site, much like the buggy sleazy practice of starting out with a PSD worrying about what the site is going to look like taking an off the shelf template is putting the cart before the horse...

Why do I say this? Content should dictate markup, markup, content and device capabilities should dictate your layouts, and only AFTER you have working layouts should you give it a coat of paint with images, borders, shadows and the like. Start out with your content, mark it up semantically, bend it to your will with CSS and semantically neutral containers (DIV and SPAN) to make your layout(S), then hang any extra graphics on it. Again, what's called "progressive enhancement"

Taking an already built layout and cramming your content into it is... well... like going to work with Al Bundy and trying to cram that fat woman's size 17 into a size 7 shoe.

Though people get WAY too hung up on their goofy graphics and fancy artsy fartsy layout trickery, to the point that content and accessibility are so neglected, it effectively ends up little more than trying to sweep under the rug a lack of content; or worse, dumping a can of shellac on a pile -- no matter how much you polish it, the result is still bug **** on horse ****.

But again, I'm a heretic, I have a very different view on this than most in the industry; but that's why I look out at the vast majority of people crapping out websites any old way in disgust to the point of nausea.

I can respect your point of view. I did basic web designing off and on for many years and learned to appreciate the art of making websites. In addition to the artistic side, functionality is easily over looked. Making a site that actually works and fits you/the business really is best customized. One daycare is not the same as another. Maybe one daycare takes in infants the other does not. I agree with your theory and ideas on building sites.

I recently advanced my knowledge using media queries. My first approach was using css (fixed screen) size approach about four years ago. I discovered the actual responsive design two years ago. I have been obsessed with learning the tricks to making a site truely responsive both small and large screens. I also avoided using bootstrap for reason I want to know what makes it work, what works, what doesn't. With responsive design, there is no one fits all. Depending on your content, you have to adjust the queries to make it fit based on screen or device. It has been challenging and if people are smart, they will start thinking more like you for that reason alone.

Originally Posted by deathshadow

Now, as always, I might be what most people would consider "harsh" -- I'm a heretic, it goes with the territory...

A few weeks ago I had a potential client state to me that she had bought a template and that she just wanted me to "change" the color theme and content to that template. To make a long story as short as I can, I was trying to tell her that isn't as easy as sticking her content to the template she bought; however, things turn nasty when she started belittling my own work. I told her to find someone else, for I didn't want the headaches that go along with it. I now just look at templates for inspiration (nothing more than that) and just let the content dictate the design (mockup) of the web page (Something that Deathshadow has been preaching all along, it's funny that it took me trial and error myself to figure that out).

I told her to find someone else, for I didn't want the headaches that go along with it.

There are certain clients (and even full time employers) that sometimes... you just have to learn when to walk away; they will cost you more in the long run -- not just in stress, but also in the wallet as they will bleed you dry with last minute changes and unreasonable requests.

This is more true as a freelancer -- where unless you are crazy you are also billing the time between clients since that time is spent looking for clients. (It's the same reason plumbers are expensive; you're also paying for the time they don't have work). Some people out there just have unreasonable time schedules (can you have this in three days?), unreasonable expectations of paying you (you can do this 48 man-hour project for $50 right?), and worse, unreasonable and outright deluded ideas of what a website is.

Which gets laughable when they hired you because they really don't know anything about websites, then start trying to micro-manage something they know nothing about. Again, take my last full time employer. Local IT support and supply company with around 40 employees (doing the job of what should have been a staff of eight). I was hired as "director of web marketing" -- but much like when I was a Vice President of IT for the Boston area "128 belt" offices of a major national insurer, they handed out titles like Director and VP to the point half the staff were "director of _______" -- too many chiefs syndrome.

But as a "director" of one of the branches of the company, I'd seen the numbers. My claims of financial doom were met with skepticism at best, ridicule at worst... I knew the company was doomed, and everyone just wanted to stuff their heads in the sand over it. At it's existing sales figures they had a year, and then the creditors come a knockin'.

But then the owner started wanting to do all those things I usually rail against -- making the page so he could edit it in *laugh* frontpage, switching to a fixed width and using design concepts that were only viable with fixed size fonts, making colors like the company logo that were illegible -- It finally reached the point that I had my most glorious "screw you, I quit" of all time... I boxed up everything that was mine, took it to the car, came back in, walked into the boss' office, and I quote:

You hired me because you know nothing about web development or having a website when it's more than two-thirds your sales figures. If you aren't going to listen to a single thing I'm telling you and are going to make changes to the site that's going to result in a loss of sales and customers, *WHAT THE **** DID YOU HIRE ME FOR!?! Consider that my exit interview.

* yelled loud enough for the entire staff to hear it. I got an ovation on exiting the building.

A quarter the rest of the staff walked that week. They went out of business three months later.

Was an interesting study in /FAIL/ of web design/development though -- the changes made by an SEO-tard firm they brought in after me (one of my former underlings kept sending me stats) did roughly multiply by 40x the sites traffic in visits... They also went from ~76% visit to sales ratio to under 1%... Do some math, it's good for a laugh. Let's say they started out with 1000 visits a week, but had 760 sales a week. (which is about what they had) -- suddenly it was 50000 visits a week, but most of the visitors gave a flying **** and were misdirected there by the sleazy SEO-tard bull, and the changes to the interface was useless to visitors, so in the first two weeks after those changes it had dropped to less than 500 sales a week... and it plummeted from there.

The real laugh being the owner showed up at my doorstep nine weeks later hat-in-hand begging for me to come back and fix it. I was not kind.

Of course, I probably wasn't kind because I'd made more freelancing that two months than I had working for him in three times that. $1500 to $4K a site from a string of people who actually had real business plans and realistic expectations paid off... As did a couple government contracts.

But now I see the exact same "I can haz intarnets?" idiocy becoming the industry standard approach -- then people wonder why the economy is in the tank. This whole "lets sleaze our content into a stock template" garbage is that same asshattery -- more so when pretty much every stock template seems to be made by people who know absolutely nothing about HTML, CSS, emissive colourspace, accessibility, or limitations of the medium; meaning they, much like their PSD jockey partners in crime, aren't qualified to be designing but two things; and Jack left town.

But it all plays into the "pay more later for something we can't afford now" mentality that's trashing the economy at every level. Take the sleazy shortcut now, get it out as quickly as possible without even a rational business model or proper expectations of what it's going to take to be successful, and then blindly hope it works... An approach with about as much legitimacy as 3AM informercials for "Make money fast in Real Estate".

Though honestly, it seems that most people treat making websites as get rich quick schemes, then wonder why there's a line in the sand between serious developers like myself, and the sleazeball scam artists preying on the ignorance of the average person.